MINSK, 19 May (BelTA) – Extremism and Nazism are different things but they employ similar methods and have very similar consequences. The political analyst Aleksei Belyayev made the statement in an interview with the newspaper SB. Belarus Segodnya as he commented on the laws on preventing the rehabilitation of Nazism and on counteracting extremism that Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko had signed, BelTA has learned.
The analyst reminded that there was no need to safeguard against attempts to justify Nazism after the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 ended. The words “fascist” and “Nazi” were some of the most offensive ones. The society had a strong moral immunity as long as most of the participants and witnesses of those events lived.
The analyst continued: “Unfortunately, as the war grows more and more distant, there are more and more people, who accidently or deliberately forget our history. They try to revive the alien symbols and ideas. The law is a response to the generational changes and challenges that we have to face today. The historical memory is becoming a true battlefield for a new war. Unfortunately, the country is close to the glorification of collaborationists, who cooperated [with the Nazi] out of their own free will instead of being forced to. A huge number of them served as part of the German army even before the Great Patriotic War began. They cooperated with German intelligence agencies and the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Attempts were made to use these people to make a backbone of the Nazi administration in Belarus. Now attempts are made to portray them as defenders of Belarusian identity while the symbols they fought for are being whitewashed and called historical ones.”
According to Aleksei Belyayev, it is time to put a stop to attempts to circulate knowingly fraudulent information. “Although certainly it is very painful to see that a country that has defeated Nazism and has lost every third resident to crimes of the invaders has to put up some barriers in the form of legal norms in order to prevent the spread of this taint,” he stated.
The analyst is convinced that extremism and Nazism are different things but they employ similar methods and have very similar consequences. “Both neglect the fate and even lives of other citizens. Both attempt to assert themselves as the only authority primarily through reliance on murders, violence, and panic. In a modern society where people need to listen to each other and learn how to modify their views for the sake of everyone's welfare an extremist ideology cannot go unpunished. It is particularly dangerous in conditions of information openness. This is why more efforts are needed to fight these manifestations. It has to be done taking into account the circumstances Belarus has had to deal with for the last 12 months. Those who do not defend themselves are doomed to lose such a war,” Aleksei Belyayev concluded.
